Back to School. Shit

Back to School is this week. Usually each summer I am counting the days until school starts.

Hey, in Palm Springs, when it is 115 out, you can’t really say: “Kid’s! Stop it! Go outside and play.”

(And what? Don’t get on the swing set, cuz you’ll sustain 2nd degree burns?)

So usually, with clenched jaws and the help of a teenaged girl who can take them to the water park, we get through. Cuz it turns out, none of us do well with a lot of unstructured time.

But not this summer.

This summer we discovered the mountains and kayaking and lake swimming. (Can we talk for just a minute about that ooglie stuff that you have to walk through in the lake to start the actual swimming?)

There has been fishing (catch and release Baby – I don’t want those suckers in my house . . . even if my house is a trailer), reading, movie watching and crawdad catching.

And we finally discovered the magic of being able to say: “Enough! Go outside and play . . . in the creek!”

And on our last weekend at the lake? They met other kids (trying not to judge the other trailer park people here). Imagine, kids coming over and the four of them running off in a pack to the lake, to kayak in the cove and chatter incessantly amongst themselves.

Heaven. I read three magazines and didn’t brush my teeth that day. The liberty of it all.

Now? I don’t want summer to end. These gorgeous summer days without the routine of homework, reading tests (AR tests? Anyone else?), hurry home from school to get to piano/ballet/soccer/jazz/sax (fill in your own list of endless frickin’ activities here).

WTF? School is starting?

Shit.